O'Reilly's husband is a cipher, whose motives are never satisfactorily explored (after moving his family far away, he promptly goes back to work in London for weeks at a time). In a book too long by 100 pages, O'Reilly again and again makes the point that she did not wish to leave her London home to live in rural Northumberland, but her husband did: 'He thinks it is spiritual home I think it beautiful but bleak and chill and nowhere that I want to be.' This whiny refrain quickly becomes irritating, and the short-entry format keeps the reasons behind that move (and O'Reilly's resentment) from ever being fully explored. As with Pearson's book, it has its charms and demerits. Remembering I Don't Know How She Does It, O'Reilly does her best impression, via blog, of Allison Pearson's overworked working mom in this collection of posts from the last three years of her life. Her second book A Year of Doing Good is published by Penguin. She started a blog,, in November 2006, which quickly picked up fans around the world with its witty tales of family and country life. Judith O'Reilly, a journalist and the mother of three young children, was persuaded to move from London to Northumberland by her husband in August 2005. 'Funny, poignant and beautifully written' Lisa Jewell 'I howled with laughter, tears of recognition at every page' Jenny Colgan Funny, honest and moving' Stephanie Calman, author of Confessions of a Bad Mother

'Genuinely funny and genuinely moving' Jane Fallon, author of Getting Rid of Matthew A family that might live happily ever after.

Judith tries to do that simple thing that women do, make hers a happy family. Pregnant with number 3 Judith is about to discover that there are one or two things about life in the country that no one told her about: that she'd be making friends with people who believed in the four horsemen of the apocalypse that running out of petrol could be a near death experience and that the closest thing to an ethnic minority would be a redhead. How else did Judith's husband persuade her to give up her career and move from her beloved London to Northumberland with two toddlers in tow? How far would you go to be the perfect mother? The hilarious Wife in the North by Judith O'Reilly, based on her enormously popular blog, recounts one woman's attempt to move her family and her life from cosmopolitan London to rural Northumberland.